“Yeah, I'll need that, say a place enough for two hands — maybe a couple. I really should have a place closer to town, but, damn it, I just want a place where I can eat my own beef.”
“I know what you mean,” the realtor agreed. “I have a couple of places you might like.”
“Then let's go see them.” Russell smiled at the lady.
The second one was perfect. Just off Exit 50, five hundred acres, a nice old farm house with a new kitchen, a two-car garage, and three sturdy outbuildings. There was clear land in all directions, a pond with some trees half a mile from the house, and plenty of room for the cattle that Russell would never see.
“This one's been on the market for five months. The owner's estate is asking four hundred,” the realtor said, “but we can probably get them to go for three-fifty.”
“Okay,” Russell said, checking access to Interstate 76. “Tell them if they sign the contract this week, I'll make a fifty-thousand cash deposit, settlement in, oh, say four or five weeks. No problem on financing. I'll pay cash for the whole thing when I get the rest of my funds transferred. But — I want to start moving in immediately. God, I hate living in hotels, done way too much of that. You think we get all that done?”
The realtor beamed at him. “I think I can guarantee it.”
“Great. So, how did the Broncos do this year?”
“Eight and eight. They're rebuilding. My husband and I have season tickets. You going to try and get tickets for the Superbowl?”
“I'd sure like to.”
“Going to be pretty hard,” the realtor warned him.
“I'll find a way.” An hour and one telephone call later, the realtor took a cashier's check for fifty thousand dollars from her banker husband. Russell had directions to the local furniture and appliance store. After an hour there, Marvin purchased a white Ford van from the local dealership and drove it to the ranch. He parked it in one of the barns. He'd be keeping the rental for a while. He would spend one more night in the motel, then settle into his new house. He did not feel any sense of accomplishment There was much left to do.
Cathy Ryan found herself paying closer attention to the newspapers now They were good for reporting scandals and leaks, and she now had the interest in such things that she had lacked before, especially for the byline of Robert Holtzman Unfortunately, the new articles on the problems at CIA were more general, concentrating mainly on changes within the Soviet Union that she had difficulty understanding It just wasn't an area in which she had much interest — as Jack didn't much care about the developments in eye surgery that his wife was very excited about Finally, there did come a piece about financial impropriety and a “very senior official.” That was the second such item and she realized that if it were Jack, she had all the investigatonal documents there in her own home It was a Sunday, and Jack was away at work again, leaving her at home with the kids again. The kids enjoyed this chilly morning in front of the TV. Cathy Ryan went into the financial files.
They were a disaster. Money management was another thing that failed to interest Dr. Caroline Ryan, and Jack assumed the duties more or less by default, just as cooking fell into her domain She didn't even know the filing system, and was certain that Jack never expected her to wade into this colossal mess of documents. Along the way, she learned that the blind trust that managed their stock portfolio was doing rather well at the moment. Ordinarily, she just saw the year-end earnings statements. Money didn't interest her very much The house was paid off. The kids' education funds were already set up. The Ryan family actually lived off the combined income of the two Doctors Ryan, which allowed their investments to grow, while complicating their annual taxes, which was also something that Jack — who still had his CPA certification — took care of, with the aid of the family's attorney. The most recent statement of net worth drew a gasp Cathy decided to add the money manager to the Christmas card list. But that was not what she was after. She found it at two-thirty in the afternoon. The file was simply marked “Zimmer,” and was naturally enough in the last drawer she got to.
The Zimmer file was several inches thick. She sat cross-legged on the floor before opening it, her head already aching from eyestrain and the Tylenol which she should have taken but hadn't. The first document was a letter from Jack to an attorney — not their regular attorney, the one who did their wills and taxes and the other routine work — instructing him to set up an educational trust fund for seven children, a number which had been changed to eight several months later, Cathy saw. The trust fund had been set up with an initial investment of over half a million dollars, and managed as a stock portfolio through the same managers who did part of the Ryan family account. Cathy was surprised to see that Jack did actually make recommendations for this account, something that he did not do for his own. He hadn't lost his touch, either. The yield from the Zimmer portfolio was twenty-three percent. Another hundred thousand dollars had been invested in a business — a Sub-Chapter-S corporation, she saw, whatever that was — with Southland Corporation as — oh, she realized, a 7-Eleven. It was a Maryland corporation, with the address given as…
That's only a few miles from here! It was, in fact, right off of Route 50, and that meant that Jack passed it twice a day on his way to and from work.
How convenient!
So, who the hell was Carol Zimmer?
Medical bills? Obstetrics?
Dr. Marsha Rosen! I know her! Had Cathy not been on the faculty at Hopkins, she would have used Marsha Rosen for her own pregnancies; Rosen was a Yale graduate with a very fine reputation.
A baby? Jacqueline Zimmer? Jacqueline? Cathy thought, her face flushed scarlet. Then the tears began streaming down her cheeks.
You bastard! You can't give me a baby, but you gave one to her, didn't you!
She checked the date, then searched her memory, Jack hadn't been home that day until very late. She remembered, because she'd had to cancel out on a dinner party over at…
He was there! He was there for the delivery, wasn't he! What more proof do I need? The triumph of the discovery changed at once into black despair.
The world could end so easily, Cathy thought. Just a slip of paper could do it, and that was it. It was over.
Is it over?
How could it not be? Even if he still wanted — did she want him?
What about the kids? Cathy asked herself. She closed the file and replaced it without rising. “You're a doctor,” she said to herself. “You're supposed to think before you act.”
The kids needed a father. But what sort of father was he? Gone thirteen or fourteen hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. He managed to take his son to one — just one! — baseball game, despite constant pleas. He was lucky to make half of Little Jack's T-Ball games. He missed every school affair, the Christmas plays, all the other things. Cathy had been half surprised that he'd been home Christmas morning. The night before, assembling the toys, he'd gotten drunk again, and she hadn't even bothered trying to attract him. What was the point? His present to her… well, it was nice enough, but the sort of thing a man could get in a few minutes of shopping, no big deal—
Shopping.
Cathy rose and checked through the mail on Jack's desk. His credit card bills were sitting in the pile. She opened one and found a bunch of entries from Hamley's in London. Six hundred dollars? But he'd only gotten one thing for Little Jack, and two small items for Sally. Six hundred dollars!
Christmas shopping for two families, Jack?
“Just how much more evidence do you need, Cathy girl?” she asked herself aloud again. “Oh God oh God oh God…”
She didn't move for a very long time, nor did she see or hear anything outside of her own misery. Only the mother in her kept subconscious track of the sound of the kids in the playroom.
Jack got home just before seven that evening, actually rather pleased with himself to be an hour early, and further pleased that he had the Mexico operation set in concrete now. All he had to do was take it to the White House, and then after he got it approved — Fowler would go for this; risks and all, distaste for covert operations and all, this was too juicy for the politician in him to turn down — and after Clark and Chavez brought it off, his stock would go up. And things would change. Things would get better. He would get things straightened out. For starters, he'd plan a vacation. It was time for one. A week off, maybe two, and if some CIA puke showed up with daily briefing documents, Ryan would kill the son-of-a-bitch. He wanted freedom from the job, and he'd get it. Two
